Environmentalists’ Worst Predictions Coming True : Ecology: The massive oil spill, well fires and other signs point to a bleak scenario.

An oil slick spreading across the Persian Gulf endangers wildlife populations already teetering from the effects of previous spills. Onshore, columns of smoke rise from Kuwait’s oil wells, and Iranian radio reports a fallout of black rain and soot from the faraway fires.

At once, environmental terror that had seemed a relatively distant and extreme war scenario is unfolding with alarming rapidity throughout the gulf.

With a major oil spill, numerous well fires and U.S. bombing runs on Iraqi nuclear reactors and chemical plants, the gulf conflict--only in its second week--already has fulfilled some of environmentalists’ darkest prewar predictions. Looking ahead, they can only surmise that, from their perspective, things will get worse.

“This is no longer a military war between nations,” said Sue Merrow, president of the Sierra Club. “This has turned into a war on the environment.”

At present, most attention is placed on the oil slick in the gulf. To a lesser degree, there is concern that oil-well fires could produce temporary, but potentially significant, changes in the region’s climate.

The oil spill already appears likely to become the world’s worst. The gulf’s geography and currents make its ecosystem extremely vulnerable to a major slick.

Experts say wildlife in the gulf probably will fare even worse proportionally than the marine life in Alaska’s much-richer Prince William Sound, where about 11 million gallons of oil spilled during the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. Whereas Prince William Sound flushes itself out each month, the Persian Gulf’s more still and shallow waters take about four to five years to cleanse themselves, according to spill experts.

“The potential is there for the damage to the gulf’s ecosystem to be proportionally greater than the damage to Prince William Sound’s ecosystem,” said Richard Townsend, president of an environmental consulting firm in Virginia.

Abdullah Dabbagh, head of a research institute in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that is tracking the spill, said that even checking the flow of new oil into the gulf probably will not halt an environmental calamity.

“The major danger is the impact on the marine environment,” he said. “I think the bulk of that impact has already been done by the fact the oil is already in the water. When you talk about the gulf as an ecosystem, it’s like a body. If the foot is amputated, the rest of the body suffers.”

Saudi environmental authorities said gulf fisheries are likely to be affected for decades. They are most concerned about the survival of several endangered species in the gulf, including sea turtles and dugongs (similar to Florida’s manatees).

Also in the oil’s path are sea grasses, mangroves and islands where birds and turtles nest. Currents are keeping the oil near shorelines.

“The gulf is a virtually enclosed sea, and it will take the oil and slosh it around like a bathtub,” said Bob Sulnick, executive director of the American Oceans Campaign. “There is no way for the animals to get away from it.”

On the eastern Saudi coast, three miles from the Kuwaiti border, noxious waves of the oil were rolling up on the beach Sunday, and the usually clean desert air was sharp with the stench of petroleum. In one section of beach, three oily birds lay dead, and a fourth struggled pathetically with its oil-matted feathers to seek refuge between rocks. No dead fish or mammals were visible.

Unlike at Prince William Sound, there were no armies of dedicated volunteers lining the beaches ready to assist distressed animals. There were no mop-up crews, no one protecting the water inlets of the desalination plants, no armada of ships laying protective booms. This is a war zone, it was explained, and such activities could prove perilous.

Much of the marine wildlife in the Persian Gulf already had been hurt by previous spills. Since 1978, at least 125 major spills have sullied the gulf, said Jim Lahive, assistant editor of the Oil Spill Intelligence Report, an international weekly newsletter.

Probably the most destructive of these spills occurred in 1983, when Iraq repeatedly attacked Iranian offshore wells in Nowruz and created what at the time was the world’s second-largest oil spill.

An estimated 80 million gallons of oil were discharged into the gulf, and birds, sea turtles, sea snakes and porpoises were killed. Even before this latest spill, tar mats up to four inches thick could be found on beaches throughout the region.

“I’m sure the bird population hasn’t recovered from the previous spill, and this is just the kind of blow that it might not be able to recover from,” Townsend said. “Two big blows like this can do them in. . . . Certainly there will be some local extinctions of bird populations.”

After the 1983 crisis, Saudi authorities developed plans for saving wildlife in the event of a future spill.

“This spill,” said Abdulbar Gain, president of Saudi Arabia’s Meteorology and Environmental Protection Agency, “represents a threat which was outside the scenarios considered in those plans, and we are concerned about the ability of these species to survive.”

With the nearly enclosed waters of the gulf subject to large fluctuations in temperature and salinity, he said, “many of these species present occur at the extremes of their ability to tolerate these environmental parameters. Further physiological stress could likely push them beyond those tolerances, causing population changes that may require decades before a new equilibrium can be attained.”

Migrating birds from Europe and the Soviet Union that are wintering in the Persian Gulf also are at risk, experts said. Other potential casualties include at least 16 species of birds that breed in the gulf, various species of whales, four species of threatened or endangered sea turtles, the endangered mugger crocodile and valuable shrimp, anchovies and mackerel.

Experts believe much of the oil will not be cleaned until it is washed ashore, and in this regard, the gulf’s sandy beaches are providential. They are far easier to clean than the kind of rocky shores found in Prince William Sound.

Beyond the slick, there are concerns whether Iraq will ignite more oil fields in Kuwait. During the first week of war, Iraqis were believed to have set fire to dozens of wells at one field just north of the Saudi border. Black smoke has blown as far away as Iran.

Tehran Radio, monitored in Cyprus, said that winds had carried “black smog” to the Persian Gulf’s east coast and that “black rain” had fallen for two hours on Kharg Island, Iran’s large offshore oil loading faciliy.

So far, there has been no massive inferno of the kind that would be produced should Iraq blow up all of Kuwait’s wells and storage tanks. Military experts believe Iraq has mined many of Kuwait’s wells.

Most scientists do not believe that the fires would be intense enough to produce worldwide climatic shifts, but they do predict sharp declines in temperature throughout the gulf region. The smoke would prevent much of the sun’s heat from reaching the ground.

Alan Robock, professor of meteorology at the University of Maryland, studied forest fires in September, 1987, in Northern California and saw a similar effect.

Before the fires started, the temperature in the area was 100 degrees, he said. As the fires continues for several weeks, the temperatures dropped to 50 degrees.

Onshore oil fires “could affect crops by reducing temperatures by a couple of degrees and reducing sunlight,” Robock said. “The one question is how much smoke there would be. . . .”

Dolan reported from Los Angeles and Balzar from Dhahran. Times staff writers David Lauter in Washington and Kenneth Freed in Cyprus contributed to this story.

MISSION TO STOP THE SPILL

Oil fire at sea: Oil near the terminal was set afire Friday night in an allied attack on a mine-laying ship. Tha pall of smoke had diminished by Sunday after the bombing, but military experts said it would be 24 hours before the full effects of the bombing operation would be known.

Sea Island loading terminal: Oil has been flowing from storage tanks to a buoy eight miles off the coast and from there leaking into the gulf. With the pipe system eliminated, the flow of oil should stop.

Onshore oil storage area: On Saturday night, F-111 fighter-bombers loaded with “smart” GBU-15 glider bombs hit the pipe control systems at two onshore storage areas 3.5 miles apart holding nearly 600 million gallons of oil.